The Journal “Science of the Total Environment”, published by Elsevier, has now been officially removed from Clarivate’s Web of Science database.
Science of the Total Environment was placed ” on hold ” in October 2024 by Clarivate after investigations revealed peer-review manipulation, fake reviewer identities, and conflicts of interest. On November 18, the journal’s coverage in the Web of Science Core Collection was formally discontinued. As a result, any content published by the journal after Volume 954 (2024) is not currently indexed.
The journal had an Impact Factor of 8.0.
Over the past few years, the journal published nearly 10,000 articles annually, and its overall quality declined.
The Article Publishing Charge (APC) in this journal is USD 4,150.
Also, see: Clarivate Delisted Journals December 2025: Web of Science Updates
Journal Details
Science of the Total Environment is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes research related to environmental science. The journal has been ranked in Q1 (Top Quartile) across multiple subject categories.
| Journal Title | Science of the Total Environment |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| ISSN | 0048-9697, 1879-1026 |
| Official Website | https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/science-of-the-total-environment |
A History of Controversy
The journal has faced years of controversy:
In the year 2020, the journal published an extraordinary paper claiming that jade amulets and magnetic catalysis could mediate COVID-19 at the molecular level. The paper was later withdrawn after widespread criticism.
Then, in 2023, Allegations surfaced that the then editor-in-chief had accepted bribes to falsely list King Saud University as his affiliation to boost institutional publication counts.
From 2024–2025, Investigations uncovered peer-review manipulation, fake reviewer identities, conflicts of interest, and irregular authorship practices.
In the last year alone, 3,706 papers were indexed in PubMed, and 52 papers were funded by the U.S. NIH
Clarivate stated simply that the journal “no longer meets publicly available quality criteria.”